Fractured Soul

Chapter 31: A Familiar Face

Mella woke slowly to the smell of food cooking. Blearily, she opened her eyes to see Roxas grilling sandwiches. Slowly, Mella sat up, the blanket falling away.

"Morning." She yawned.

"Afternoon, actually. How do you feel?" Roxas handed Mella a sandwich.

"Slightly better." Mella carefully moved her injured leg into a more comfortable spot and ate her sandwich. Roxas looked at her ankle. Mella looked at it too. It had been carefully wrapped, her shoe missing. "Where's the other shoe?"

"It's in your bag. I set your ankle when I found you but I need to check to see if the dagger wound is healing." Roxas took his sandwich off the fire and dug around in one of the bags, pulling out bandages and random pieces of sticks.

"Alright. Go ahead." Mella finished her sandwich. Roxas unwrapped her ankle gently. The last layer of bandages had blood on them.

"You probably don't want to look." Roxas warned. Mella nodded and suddenly became very interested in a rock. She felt the bandage come off and Roxas inhaled sharply. He started muttering in Ramoric.

"Can I look?" Mella asked.

"No, you really don't want to look. Brace yourself." Out of the corner of her eye, Mella saw more blue flames. Her ankle burned painfully, but it didn't feel like anything else was happening. There was more muttering. Mella felt him start to wrap it again, adding the sticks for a splint.

"Roxas, what's going--" Mella started, but Roxas cut her off.

"Will you stop calling me that?" he snapped, tying the knot in the bandage. Mella was taken aback.

"What? I thought it was your name." Mella saw her bag from Ryn and pulled it over. All the clothes she had taken from the water city were in there. She pulled out a sweater and yanked it on.

"Roxas is my middle name. My parents and everyone else insisted on calling me by it, since it was the name of the first ruler of Rhydona. But I hate it. I don't want to be remembered like the psycho-maniac that screwed up our country in the first place." Roxas started shoving blankets back in bags.

"So what am I supposed to call you? What's your real name?" Mella asked, handing him her blanket. Roxas sighed and folded up the blanket, before it too was shoved unceremoniously into a bag.

"My real name is Wesley Roxas Tivena, crown Prince of Rhydona, General of the Elemental Army, and--" Mella put a hand up to stop him.

"I asked for a name, not a job description. So, what's so bad about my ankle? And what's the rest of the explanation?" Roxas's expression went from slightly amused to emotionless. "Did you think I would forget? What do you know about me? Or who I used to be?"

Roxas (it was stuck in her head as Roxas, Mella didn't think it would ever change.) ran a hand through his messy onyx hair, searching for the right words. He pulled out a dagger.

"Is this one of yours?" he asked. Mella shook her head and dug in her bag. She pulled out Myra's box and opened it. Huh…I thought it only opened with my magic…guess it'll just open for me. Mella took out one of the daggers.

"Mine are all a part of a set." Mella held the dagger out to him. The designs on the hilts were very different, and Mella's dagger was thinner. "That's Rin's. What's wrong-"

"She put a spell on it. Your ankle isn't healing. Neither is your wrist. Look." Mella looked down at her left wrist, circled with blue marks. The scratch from a dagger that Rin had thrown during her fight hadn't healed. It looked like it had happened moments ago. "We have to find a village, because I can't fix it. I don't know what else she might have done."